We're all pretty familiar now with the story of the Google-YouTube deal, wherein three music labels - Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG - received a stake in YouTube. Collectively, they stand to make up to $50 million from the agreement. A fourth major record label - the UK's EMI - wasn't part of that agreement. EMI's chief executive Alain Levy said in The Times this week (no online version, seemingly) that there were copyright issues involved that would make a deal difficult, and chairman Eric Nicoli was quoted saying that just because the other major labels had signed, that "doesn't make it right". It also emerged this week that Google had set aside $200 million to deal with YouTube's copyright issues.
Gotuit, you may remember from previous coverage, is among scores of new sites that are being compared to YouTube - the big difference is that it serves up mainstream music videos, news and sports, and doesn't include any user-generated content. They also don't allow external embedding on sites like MySpace, hi5, Friendster and blogs (YouTube have the ability to turn this feature off, and frequently do so when a publisher requests it). Gotuit is supported by 15 second ads between clips, and no doubt EMI is getting a good cut of that revenue. They have some social features too, like sharing a link via email and creating a list of favorites, but in reality the social aspect is much less apparent than on the YouTube contenders - Metacafe, iFilm and the rest. Copyright holders probably love the fact that Gotuit is so locked down, but for the users, it's not such a good deal.
What's not clear is whether this rules out a deal with YouTube - could EMI partner with both video sites, or have they already made their move into online video?
Update: Here's the press release.
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